DOMESTIC BLISS.
Tu-Kila-Kila went home that day in a very bad humor. The portent of the
bitten finger had seriously disturbed him. For, strange as it sounds to
us, he really believed himself in his own divinity; and the bare thought
that the holy soil of earth should be dabbled and wet with the blood of a
god gave him no little uneasiness in his own mind on his way homeward.
Besides, what would his people think of it if they found it out? At all
hazards almost, he must strive to conceal this episode of the bite from
the men of Boupari. A god who gets wounded, and, worse still, gets
wounded in the very act of trying to break a great taboo laid on by
himself in a previous incarnation--such a god undoubtedly lays himself
open to the gravest misapprehensions on the part of his worshippers.
Indeed, it was not even certain whether his people, if they knew, would
any longer regard him as a god at all. The devotion of savages is
profound, but it is far from personal. When deities pass so readily from
one body to another, you must always keep a sharp lookout lest the great
spirit should at any minute have deserted his earthly tabernacle, and
have taken up his abode in a fresh representative. Honor the gods by all
means; but make sure at the same time what particular house they are just
then inhabiting.
It was the hour of siesta in Tu-Kila-Kila's tent. For a short space in
the middle of the day, during the heat of the sun, while Fire and Water,
with their embers and their calabash, sat on guard in a porch by the
bamboo gate, Tu-Kila-Kila, Pillar of Heaven and Threshold of Earth, had
respite for a while from his daily task of guarding the sacred banyan,
and could take his ease after his meal in his own quarters. While that
precious hour of taboo lasted, no wandering dragon or spirit of the air
could hurt the holy tree, and no human assailant dare touch or approach
it. Even the disease-making gods, who walk in the pestilence, could not
blight or wither it. At all other times Tu-Kila-Kila mounted guard over
his tree with a jealousy that fairly astonished Felix Thurstan's soul;
for Felix Thurstan only dimly understood as yet how implicitly
Tu-Kila-Kila's own life and office were bound up with the inviolability
of the banyan he protected.
Within the hut, during that playtime of siesta, while the lizards (who
are also gods) ran up and down the wall, and puffed their orange throats,
Tu-Kila-Kila lounged at his ease that afternoon, with one of his many
wives--a tall and beautiful Polynesian woman, lithe and supple, as is the
wont of her race, and as exquisitely formed in every limb and feature as
a sculptured Greek goddess. A graceful wreath of crimson hibiscus adorned
her shapely head, round which her long and glossy black hair was coiled
in great rings with artistic profusion. A festoon of blue flowers and
dark-red dracæna leaves hung like a chaplet over her olive-brown neck and
swelling bust. One breadth of native cloth did duty for an apron or
girdle round her waist and hips. All else was naked. Her plump brown arms
were set off by the green and crimson of the flowers that decked her.
Tu-Kila-Kila glanced at his slave with approving eyes. He always liked
Ula; she pleased him the best of all his women. And she knew his ways,
too: she never contradicted him.
Among savages, guile is woman's best protection. The wife who knows when
to give way with hypocritical obedience, and when to coax or wheedle her
yielding lord, runs the best chance in the end for her life. Her model is
not the oak, but the willow. She must be able to watch for the rising
signs of ill-humor in her master's mind, and guard against them
carefully. If she is wise, she keeps out of her husband's way when his
anger is aroused, but soothes and flatters him to the top of his bent
when his temper is just slightly or momentarily ruffled.
"The Lord of Heaven and Earth is ill at ease," Ula murmured,
insinuatingly, as Tu-Kila-Kila winced once with the pain of his swollen
finger. "What has happened today to the Increaser of Bread-Fruit? My lord
is sad. His eye is downcast. Who has crossed my master's will? Who
has dared to anger him?"
Tu-Kila-Kila kept the wounded hand wrapped up in a soft leaf, like a
woolly mullein. All the way home he had been obliged to conceal it, and
disguise the pain he felt, lest Fire and Water should discover his
secret. For he dared not let his people know that the Soul of all dead
parrots had bitten his finger, and drawn blood from the sacred veins of
the man-god. But he almost hesitated now whether or not he should confide
in Ula. A god may surely trust his own wedded wives. And yet--such need
to be careful--women are so treacherous! He suspected Ula sometimes of
being a great deal too fond of that young man Toko, who used to be one of
the temple attendants, and whom he had given as Shadow accordingly to the
King of the Rain, so as to get rid of him altogether from among the crowd
of his followers. So he kept his own counsel for the moment, and
disguised his misfortune. "I have been to see the King of the Birds this
morning," he said, in a grumbling voice; "and I do not like him. That
God is too insolent. For my part I hate these strangers, one and all.
They have no respect for Tu-Kila-Kila like the men of Boupari. They are
as bad as atheists. They fear not the gods, and the customs of our
fathers are not in them."
Ula crept nearer, with one lithe round arm laid caressingly close to her
master's neck. "Then why do you make them Korong?" she asked, with
feminine curiosity, like some wife who seeks to worm out of her husband
the secret of freemasonry. "Why do you not cook them and eat them at
once, as soon as they arrive? They are very good food--so white and fine.
That last new-comer, now--the Queen of the Clouds--why not eat her? She
is plump and tender."
"I like her," Tu-Kila-Kila responded, in a gloating tone. "I like her
every way. I would have brought her here to my temple and admitted her at
once to be one of Tu-Kila-Kila's wives--only that Fire and Water would
not have permitted me. They have too many taboos, those awkward gods. I
do not love them. But I make my strangers Korong for a very wise reason.
You women are fools; you understand nothing; you do not know the
mysteries. These things are a great deal too high and too deep for you.
You could not comprehend them. But men know well why. They are wise; they
have been initiated. Much more, then, do I, who am the very high god--who
eat human flesh and drink blood like water--who cause the sun to shine
and the fruits to grow--without whom the day in heaven would fade and die
out, and the foundations of the earth would be shaken like a plantain
leaf."
Ula laid her soft brown hand soothingly on the great god's arm just above
the elbow. "Tell me," she said, leaning forward toward him, and looking
deep into his eyes with those great speaking gray orbs of hers; "tell
me, O Sustainer of the Equipoise of Heaven; I know you are great; I know
you are mighty; I know you are holy and wise and cruel; but why must you
let these sailing gods who come from unknown lands beyond the place
where the sun rises or sets--why must you let them so trouble and annoy
you? Why do you not at once eat them up and be done with them? Is not
their flesh sweet? Is not their blood red? Are they not a dainty well fit
for the banquet of Tu-Kila-Kila?"
The savage looked at her for a moment and hesitated. A very beautiful
woman this Ula, certainly. Not one of all his wives had larger brown
limbs, or whiter teeth, or a deeper respect for his divine nature. He had
almost a mind--it was only Ula? Why not break the silence enjoined upon
gods toward women, and explain this matter to her? Not the great secret
itself, of course--the secret on which hung the Death and Transmigration
of Tu-Kila-Kila--oh, no; not that one. The savage was far too cunning
in his generation to intrust that final terrible Taboo to the ears of a
woman. But the reason why he made all strangers Korong. A woman might
surely be trusted with that--especially Ula. She was so very handsome.
And she was always so respectful to him.
"Well, the fact of it is," he answered, laying his hand on her neck, that
plump brown neck of hers, under the garland of dracæna leaves, and
stroking it voluptuously, "the sailing gods who happen upon this island
from time to time are made Korong--but hush! it is taboo." He gazed
around the hut suspiciously. "Are all the others away?" he asked, in a
frightened tone. "Fire and Water would denounce me to all my people if
once they found I had told a taboo to a woman. And as for you, they would
take you, because you knew it, and would pull your flesh from your bones
with hot stone pincers!"
Ula rose and looked about her at the door of the tent. She nodded thrice;
then she glided back, serpentine, and threw herself gracefully, in a
statuesque pose, on the native mat beside him. "Here, drink some more
kava," she cried, holding a bowl to his lips, and wheedling him with her
eyes. "Kava is good; it is fit for gods. It makes them royally drunk, as
becomes great deities. The spirits of our ancestors dwell in the bowl;
when you drink of the kava they mount by degrees into your heart and
head. They inspire brave words. They give you thoughts of heaven. Drink,
my master, drink. The Ruler of the Sun in Heaven is thirsty."
She lay propped on one elbow, with her face close to his; and offered
him, with one brown, irresistible hand, the intoxicating liquor.
Tu-Kila-Kila took the bowl, and drank a second time, for he had drunk of
it once with his dinner already. It was seldom he allowed himself the
luxury of a second draught of that very stupefying native intoxicant, for
he knew too well the danger of insecurely guarding his sacred tree; but
on this particular occasion, as on so many others in the collective life
of humanity, "the woman tempted him," and he acted as she told him. He
drank it off deep. "Ha, ha! that is good!" he cried, smacking his lips.
"That is a drink fit for a god. No woman can make kava like you, Ula." He
toyed with her arms and neck lazily once more. "You are the queen of my
wives," he went on, in a dreamy voice. "I like you so well, that, plump
as you are, I really believe, Ula, I could never make up my mind to eat
you."
"My lord is very gracious," Ula made answer, in a soft, low tone,
pretending to caress him. And for some minutes more she continued to make
much of him in the fulsome strain of Polynesian flattery.
At last the kava had clearly got into Tu-Kila-Kila's head. Then Ula bent
forward once more and again attacked him. "Now I know you will tell me,"
she said, coaxingly, "why you make them Korong. As long as I live, I will
never speak or hint of it to anybody anywhere. And if I do--why, the
remedy is near. I am your meat--take me and eat me."
Even cannibals are human; and at the touch of her soft hand, Tu-Kila-Kila
gave way slowly. "I made them Korong," he answered, in rather thick
accents, "because it is less dangerous for me to make them so than to
choose for the post from among our own islanders. Sooner or later, my day
must come; but I can put it off best by making my enemies out of
strangers who arrive upon our island, and not out of those of my own
household. All Boupari men who have been initiated know the terrible
secret--they know where lies the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila. The strangers who
come to us from the sun or the sea do not know it; and therefore my life
is safest with them. So I make them Korong whenever I can, to prolong my
own days, and to guard my secret."
"And the Death of Tu-Kila-Kila?" the woman whispered, very low, still
soothing his arm with her hand and patting his cheek softly from time to
time with a gentle, caressing motion. "Tell me where does that live? Who
holds it in charge? Where is Tu-Kila-Kila's great spirit laid by in
safety? I know it is in the tree; but where and in what part of it?"
Tu-Kila-Kila drew back with a little cry of surprise. "You know it is in
the tree!" he cried. "You know my soul is kept there! Why, Ula, who told
you that? and you a woman! Bad medicine indeed! Some man has been
blabbing what he learned in the mysteries. If this should reach the ears
of the King of the Rain--" he paused mysteriously.
"What? What?" Ula cried, seizing his hand in hers, and pressing it hard
to her bosom in her anxiety and eagerness. "Tell me the secret! Tell me!"
With a sudden sharp howl of darting pain, Tu-Kila-Kila withdrew his hand.
She had squeezed the finger the parrot had bitten, and blood began once
more to flow from it freely.
A wild impulse of revenge came over the savage. He caught her by the
neck with his other hand, pressed her throat hard, till she was black in
the face, kicked her several times with ferocious rage, and then flung
her away from him to the other side of the hut with a fierce and
untranslatable native imprecation.
Ula, shaken and hurt, darted away toward the door, with a face of abject
terror. For every reason on earth she was intensely alarmed. Were it
merely as a matter of purely earthly fear, she had ground enough for
fright in having so roused the hasty anger of that powerful and
implacable creature. He would kill her and eat her with far less
compunction than an English farmer would kill and eat one of his own
barnyard chickens. But besides that, it terrified her not a little in
more mysterious ways to see the blood of a god falling upon the earth so
freely. She knew not what awful results to herself and her race might
follow from so terrible a desecration.
But, to her utter astonishment, the great god himself, mad with rage as
he was, seemed none the less almost as profoundly frightened and
surprised as she herself was. "What did you do that for?" he cried, now
sufficiently recovered for thought and speech, wringing his hand with
pain, and then popping his finger hastily into his mouth to ease it. "You
are a clumsy thing. And you want to destroy me, too, with your foolish
clumsiness."
He looked at her and scowled. He was very angry. But the savage woman is
nothing if not quick-witted and politic. In a flash of intuition, Ula saw
at once he was more frightened than hurt; he was afraid of the effect of
this strange revelation upon his own reputation for supreme godship. With
every mark and gesture of deprecatory servility the woman sidled back to
his side like a whipped dog. For a second she looked down on the floor
at the drops of blood; then, without one word of warning or one instant's
hesitation, she bit her own finger hard till blood flowed from it freely.
"I will show this to Fire and Water," she said, holding it up before his
eyes all red and bleeding. "I will say you were angry with me and bit me
for a punishment, as you often do. They will never find out it was the
blood of a god. Have no fear for their eyes. Let me look at your finger."
Tu-Kila-Kila, half appeased by her clever quickness, held his hand out
sulkily, like a disobedient child. Ula examined it close. "A bite," she
said, shortly. "A bite from a bird! a peck from a parrot."
Tu-Kila-Kila jerked out a surly assent. "Yes, the Soul of all dead
parrots," he answered, with an angry glare. "It bit me this morning at
the King of the Birds'. A vicious brute. But no one else saw it."
Ula put the finger up to her own mouth, and sucked the wound gently.
Her medicine stanched it. Then she took a thin leaf of the paper
mulberry, soft, cool, and soothing, and bound it round the place with a
strip of the lace-like inner bark, as deftly as any hospital nurse in
London would have done it. These savage women are capital hands in
sickness. Tu-Kila-Kila sat and sulked meanwhile, like a disappointed
child. When Ula had finished, she nodded her head and glided softly away.
She knew her chance of learning the secret was gone for the moment, and
she had too much of the guile of the savage woman to spoil her chances by
loitering about unnecessarily while her lord was in his present
ungracious humor.
As she stole from the hut, Tu-Kila-Kila, looking ruefully at his wounded
hand, and then at that light and supple retreating figure, muttered
sulkily to himself, with a very bad grace, "the woman knows too much. She
nearly wormed my secret out of me. She knows that Tu-Kila-Kila's life and
soul are bound up in the tree. She knows that I bled, and that the parrot
bit me. If she blabs, as women will do, mischief may come of it. I am a
great god, a very great god--keen, bloodthirsty, cruel. And I like that
woman. But it would be wiser and safer, perhaps, after all, to forego my
affection and to make a great feast of her."
And Ula, looking back with a smile and a nod, and holding up her own
bitten and bleeding hand with a farewell shake, as if to remind her
divine husband of her promise to show it to Fire and Water, murmured low
to herself as she went, "He is a very great god; a very great god, no
doubt; but I hate him, I hate him! He would eat me to-morrow if I didn't
coax him and wheedle him and keep him in a good temper. You want to be
sharp, indeed, to be the wife of a god. I got off to-day with the skin of
my teeth. He might have turned and killed me. If only I could find out
the Great Taboo, I would tell it to the stranger, the King of the Rain;
and then, perhaps, Tu-Kila-Kila would die. And the stranger would become
Tu-Kila-Kila in turn, and I would be one of his wives; and Toko, who is
his Shadow, would return again to the service of Tu-Kila-Kila's temple."
But Fire, as she passed, was saying to Water, "We are getting tired in
Boupari of Lavita, the son of Sami. If the luck of the island is not to
change, it is high time, I think, we should have a new Tu-Kila-Kila."